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Aid Groups Say Myanmar Food Stolen by Military

YANGON, Myanmar — The directors of several relief organizations in Myanmar said Wednesday that some of the international aid arriving into the country for the victims of Cyclone Nargis was being stolen, diverted or warehoused by the country’s army.

The United States military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there was a possibility that “a significant tropical cyclone” — a second big storm — would form within 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy Delta, the region that suffered most from the first storm, which struck May 3.

Thailand’s prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, flew to Yangon on Wednesday to try to persuade Myanmar’s leaders to allow more foreign aid workers into the country. The members of the military junta told him they were in control of the relief operations and had no need for foreign experts, he told reporters after returning to Bangkok, The Associated Press reported.

The government said there were no outbreaks of disease or starvation among the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the cyclone. In Yangon, Mr. Samak met with the prime minister, Lt. Gen. Thein Sein, The A.P. report said.

The aid directors in Myanmar declined to be quoted directly on their concerns about the stolen supplies for fear of angering the ruling junta and jeopardizing their operations, although Marcel Wagner, country director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, confirmed that aid was being diverted by the army. He said the issue would become an increasing problem, although he declined to give further details because of the sensitivity of the situation.

International aid shipments continued to arrive Wednesday, including five new air deliveries of relief supplies from the United States. Western diplomats said their representatives at the airport were making sure the cargo was unloaded efficiently and then trucked to staging areas. The fate of the supplies after that, however, remained unknown, because the junta has barred all foreigners, including credentialed diplomats and aid workers, from accompanying any donated aid, tracking its distribution or following up on its delivery.

Myanmar state radio reported Wednesday that the death toll from the May 3 cyclone had risen again, to 38,491, Agence France-Presse reported, with 27,838 people still missing. The toll has been increasing daily as more of the missing are identified as dead. The United Nations has estimated that the toll could be more than 60,000. The International Red Cross estimated Wednesday that the cyclone death toll was between 68,833 and 127,990, according to The A.P.

There were rumors in Myanmar on Wednesday that special high-energy biscuits donated for distribution in the disaster areas had been replaced by cheaper, off-the-shelf crackers. But Mr. Wagner and the others said they had not heard of high-quality foodstuffs being stolen and replaced by inferior products.

Although aid flights are now regularly seen arriving at the Yangon airport, international rescue teams and disaster-relief experts for the most part are being kept away from the country. A small French rescue team has arrived in Yangon, although it was unclear whether it had received official permission. The government said it would allow in 160 relief workers from neighboring countries, including India, China, Bangladesh, and Thailand, The A.P. reported. But diplomats and representatives of aid missions said that visas for overseas experts were still being denied.

The United Nations’ top emergency aid official expressed “huge frustration” Wednesday with the Myanmar government’s barring foreign aid workers from the areas most devastated by last week’s cyclone and urged it to make “a radical change” and reverse its decision. John Holmes, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said he could report only “small signs of progress.”

Photo

Children on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, on Wednesday reached for bananas being handed out by a local donor.Credit
Associated Press

The United Nations, he said, had raised its estimate of the number of people “severely affected “ by the cyclone and therefore most in need of emergency aid to between 1.6 million and 2.5 million. The earlier estimates were 1.3 million and 1.9 million, respectively.

Mr. Wagner said he and his agency’s foreign staff members were now barred from the Irrawaddy Delta, even areas where the group has projects from before the storm. Fortunately, he said, he has Burmese staff members who are permitted to pass through an increasing number of military checkpoints.

The Adventist group specializes in rainwater collection, water filtration and sanitation — just the kinds of expertise most needed now — and Mr. Wagner said outside experts were needed to train local people in the proper use of filters, pumps and hygiene.

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Reports have been mixed about how much aid was actually getting through to the delta. One longtime relief coordinator in Myanmar said Tuesday that 30 percent of the people in the damaged areas had been reached. But other agencies were encouraged about recent improvements in deliveries, especially groups with projects and local staff already in place, and the agencies with established working relationships with the government.

The World Health Organization said its supplies were arriving in the country normally, without being diverted, siphoned off or replaced with substandard items.

Mr. Wagner said his agency had success in getting its trucks into Labutta, although daily rainstorms were beginning to make road travel more difficult. The monsoon season would make things worse, he said, and he and the World Health Organization experts said they expected to start getting reports from the field soon about malaria, dengue fever and water-borne diseases. Mr. Wagner was careful to point out that these afflictions were not unusual in the delta region, saying, “They happen every year at this time, with or without a cyclone.”

Shari Villarosa, the senior diplomat at the United States Embassy in Yangon, said she was encouraged by the military government’s acceptance of aid. “The Burmese will see they’re going to need help getting this aid out, but they’re going to come around way too slow — and too late for many,” Ms. Villarosa said during an interview in her office.

A number of countries have offered to bring in aid and deliver it from the south, by ship, but the junta has refused. One of the generals’ most enduring fears is a seaborne invasion by Western powers it calls “foreign saboteurs.”

“These guys really believe we are planning an invasion,” Ms. Villarosa said. The United States said this week that several of its military ships were in the area and ready to provide help in Myanmar. “If they hear that a large U.S. ship is off the coast, they don’t receive the message that it’s a genuine humanitarian effort,” she said.

A medical officer from the World Health Organization said Wednesday that the presence of corpses in the region’s waters was not a serious health issue.

“I know this issue of dead bodies is a worldwide concern, but the dead bodies do not represent any specific additional public health risk,” said Pino Annunziata, a medical officer in the organization’s Department of Emergency Response and Operations. “This is a very negligible risk from a public health standpoint. We have to focus on the survivors.”

Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Aid Groups Say Some Myanmar Food Aid Is Stolen or Diverted by the Military. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe